Chapter 96 — Old Sentiments
劍問蒼天 · Page 6 of 6
And, inexplicably, deep in the bottom of his heart, that faint sorrow.
The wind stirred the treetops, and their bodies too swayed gently in the night wind.
No one spoke; they only gazed in silence.
These ten years of time, all at once, slowly began to churn up from the bottom of the heart, bit by bit, surging into the mind.
Her hand, holding the sword, was pale as it had been ten years ago—had there ever been a time when he had held it in his palm?
He smiled faintly, with a touch of bitterness, and said softly, "How have you been?"
Lu Xueling did not answer, not a single word. Her lips were pale from biting down hard, and her figure, embraced by the night, was desolate and quietly beautiful.
Ming Li—no, Zhang Qingyue—on this moonless, pitch-black night, before this woman, suddenly seemed to have returned to ten years ago. His body too, it seemed, trembled faintly in the shadows, in a way no one knew.
"Why do you not kill me?" the beautiful woman said quietly, the frost-cold Tianya still in her hand, still pointing at him.
He gazed into her eyes, so bright there, like silent flames.
He lowered his head slightly, and after a long while, looking at his own figure, and at her swaying gently before his shadow, he said mildly, "Ten years ago, in the Jade Balance Hall, why did you defend me at all costs, and speak for me?"
Lu Xueling did not answer; only the corners of her lips moved slightly, and the hand holding the sword gripped so tightly—as though afraid of something.
In those bright eyes, whose figure was it that flickered?
Zhang Qingyue!
So it had not changed after all? In these ten years, had nothing truly changed?
She stared, transfixed, and bit her lip, keeping herself still cold, willing her gaze never to blur.
But whose heart was this, beating so, beating fiercely within a heart long grown icy? That faint tenderness, silent so long, wandering unseen through countless deep nights, now sudden as flame, blazing hot, burning upon her breast!
At the corner of her lips there came, all at once, a faint bitterness, a trace of moisture.
The hand that held her sword slowly fell away.
She lifted her head and looked to the sky.
The wind stirred her soft, lovely hair and brushed across her pale cheeks.
So it was that the sky had begun to rain again?